Don't recall exactly what I posted previously, so this may not even be what Super is referring to, but it is true that observing a good number of Trump supporters does remind me of work I did (a long time ago now) with functionally illiterate English-speaking adults. My observation was that they tended to decode/decipher words on a page, not read them. There were key words and phrases they had picked up one way or another by necessity in life that popped out of what I think they otherwise perceived as a sea of seemingly encrypted (from their perspective) data. Once they saw one of the limited words, it seemed to jump off the page and they would then leap to a guess about what the sentence or passage was about without actually being able to read it.
Another way to think about it is for anyone who has ever learned or tried to learn how to read music. For the novice, it is an act of translation (this black dot on this line means A, this one means G, etc.), painfully translating each line first as a note, then looking for "punctuation" (is it sharp or flat) and then further deciphering the timing information (is it a quarter note or a half note or an eighth note). They are not really reading music, which is its own language, at that point, just translating from music to English. Similarly, in my experience with functionally illiterate adults who are either trying to learn to read or just needing help filling out forms (which is really more my role in my volunteer efforts), part of the problem was that even after sounding out the word, they might still not be able to move from 3 syllables to a single word or really grasp what it means on its own, much less in connection with the words around it. They are translating/decoding (which I'm using in the sense of decoding an encrypted message, not in the educator's lingo for learning to read), not reading.
Consider this sentence from the NC website for obtaining unemployment benefits (I just pulled it at random as the kind of thing that the functionally illiterate REALLY struggle to navigate without help -- and even highly literate people often struggle to follow bureaucrateeze):
"North Carolina law requires you to serve an unpaid waiting week before you can be paid unemployment benefits. The first week you may be eligible for unemployment is your unpaid waiting week. Even though you are not paid for this week, you must still file your weekly certification. "
In helping people with a sentence like the above, here is about how I found they were INITIALLY seeing it:
"North Carolina law kdjk ;rfjkd;fkjdl;aoi kjdk jfd unpaid kdjfdk week kdjfkdl fjd;oia djkl;fldkafj ;dl paid k JKDF:K :LDSFK DFkjdkjfla;. The first week djsk;fd jkdf kf;lajdl;fjdl;afkdj kfldkjfka;sdk;lfd week. kdjf dk;fjdk;alfdj lk;ajfdk;lafdk not paid djfdklfdj klafdj k, you must jdf;ld fakdf jdkl;af jdklf djkad."
We were encouraged to help someone who needed help with this to read aloud the sentence a few times and then talk about what it meant. But the only thing they likely got without significant guidance and effort would be to assume that the unemployment check is paid weekly and they wanted to know how soon they would get it but couldn't sufficiently decode the sentence to even approach understanding what the point of this particular direction might be (which is actually more about having to provide the certification that you are not employed and are actively seeking employment even in the first week when you are not going to get an unemployment check).
Now, clearly, most of Trump's fans are not functionally illiterate, but many of them read on anywhere from a first grade to sixth grade level. As children, our listening comprehension skills are well ahead of our reading comprehension skills, but the listening comprehension impacts the ability to develop reading comprehension and in turn limited reading comprehension usually stunts the development of vocabulary and the the development of more complex listening comprehension.
So, in politics, people tend to get lost in complex policy positions and reject complex discussions that require nuance. I think that's why I started assuming in August that voters who claimed they needed to hear more about Kamala's policy positions really meant they were never going to vote for her, but had latched onto needing more details as an excuse. People with limited reading and listening comprehension get through their life without a working framework of context or an ability to process nuance, and so reject the notion that anything is as complex as some people are saying because they get by just fine without all that fancy talk.
Listen to Trump supporters interviewed at a rally and they clearly have no idea what is or anyone else's policy positions are on almost anything, but they do know that Trump is speaking to them on a basic level that is reassuring and resonates with their day to day lived experience -- they believe that he understands them because they understand him. He is using words they know in ways they are used to hearing other people use them and he is consistent, repeating them over and over for emphasis. I think it is why they take pleasure in repeating his statements back at people who they can see are infuriated by the statement. They don't know or really care whether it is internally inconsistent, incoherent or factually incorrect, they just know he says it, they like the sound of it, saying it to each other is like a secret handshake among themselves and it makes people who talk in big words and look down on them go bananas.
Whether by instinct or clever planning, I think that Trump is a MASTER at communicating with people with limited listening (and likely reading) comprehension. He uses key words and phrases over and over and over and those are key for people to latch onto. He insists that things ARE NOT so complicated and the people who insist otherwise are not to be trusted. LIBERTY! INVASION! MIGRANT CRIME! COMMUNIST! You don't need to know precisely what those words mean in the dictionary but you can tell from tone and repetition that they mean something good (LIBERTY!) or bad (INVASION!). They/them means the bad guys. We the People means the good guys.
